IF public policy were based just on what we know works, universal pre-kindergarten education would already be the law of the land. The public duty to educate children would not, magically, kick in at age 5 for kindergarten. High-quality preschool would be a foundation for school readiness, leveling academic disparities across race and income lines.
But such a utopia is not to be found. The Washington Legislature is moving, slowly, in that direction; Congress, less so. Cities have begun to redefine the public duty to the tiniest of students. That is why the City of Seattle’s proposal for a universal, high-quality preschool experiment seems promising.
At the risk of sounding ungracious, my own complaint with the Seattle Times editorial board on universal preschool is that they didn’t take the lead on it sooner. For all their strong words in favor of charter schools, increased testing, and other so called “reforms,” high quality early learning is the only educational reform absolutely proven to work. If the editorial board had focused more on improving education and less on busting the teachers unions, perhaps Seattle might have moved toward universal preschool a couple years sooner.
So I take it that parental responsibility is a thing of the past? Sounds like Seattle wants to be some sort of government run cradle to grave utopia…no thanks.
@2 because K-12 universal education of our children in a government run system killed parental responsibility?
@2, K-12 is fine, but I don’t see how its the governments responsibility to babysit toddlers.
Since when has the Seattle Times editorial board supported anything that didn’t generate corporate revenue, often through privitization of government services???
A classic example is Goldman Sachs, a leading investor in the charter school industry that constantly looks for ways to squeeze the last drops of life blood out of our communities after having run a steamroller back and forth back over the economy since the collapse that started in 2007. GS and corporations like it could care less about fostering public pre-school education that produces better educated, prosperous, happy citizens decades in the future. All they care about is making a quick buck now.
@3 How about the ST’s explanation?
“High-quality preschool would be a foundation for school readiness, leveling academic disparities across race and income lines.“
@5 Yes, and if you accept that as fact—as many education experts do—then high-quality preschool would be part of our “paramount duty” as defined in WA’s constitution.
@Yup, you make two presumptions that simply are not warranted. First, that society providing children with education somehow supplants, usurps, or precludes parental responsibility when, in fact, it facilitates it. Second, that “high quality pre-school”, which has been well-defined, is equivalent to babysitting. You are nowhere near the truth.